The Endless

Organic Empathy

A way way to maintain emotional connection in heated moments. When we disagree, it's easy to argue about the details incessantly, and sometimes that distracts from the emotions that really need to be heard and understood. Here's a guide to taking the time to

The Loss of Stuck

A poem from August 3, 2021 Emma Joe · The Loss of StuckI'm feeling a sadness. I will try to explain. When I was a child, all the time, there was play. The outside was play. The inside was play. Work was play. You couldn't

torus

A beginner's guide to Torus, the board game

Torus is a board game inspired by go, invented by my physicist friend Erin and myself. This post is a summary of the basics of gameplay we've derived so far.

Project Winter Content Updates

Let's figure out what actually happens in this game... I've had a lot of trouble understanding the mechanics that aren't explicitly explained in the tutorial or a couple games of practice play, so I decided to collect all the content updates Project Winter ever

Dynamic Preview of MathJax

Minimal instant pretty math. TL;DR Update. There's also Mathcha and Mathquill if you'd prefer to not edit LaTeX directly. WhoIf you're someone who wants a fast way to type pretty math: to take short notesto discuss via a screen shareto test sections of

tidying

Objective Tidiness Conditions

While "tidying up" the apartment, I've needed a clear procedure for myself, and now, to teach my apartment mates how to do it. Here's how I have explained it. Note If you've not read/listened to any of Marie Kondo's work or

art

Transfiguration

Art inspired by Yoko Ono's Acorn, a book of conceptual instructions, and my own meditations. Anyone may share with credit. Context The same book I bought four years ago, Acorn

My Glucose Tolerance

Diabetes runs strong in my family. When I had a bad response to a weekend of cake, I felt the need to test my sugar response and make a plan. A bad response to cake It's Friday morning. I bake the "Family Favorite

programming

Calendar Search

I need to text every student from this semester with when I'm planning on going home, and I decided to search my tutoring calendar for the names using python to get a complete list. First Steps Things necessary to get started, that you may

analysis

Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person (Topics)

So much I've seen from The School of Life has been great, and this video my father shared with me is no exception: The one thing it doesn't have is a list of topics, which is really unfortunate since it crams so much into

cogsci

A Solution Mindset

Even those skilled at problem solving can lose their solution mindset, as I call it, and so it's important to recognize what it is and is not. Soon I will post on how to encourage a solution mindset in yourself and others. What is

art

Dishwash

Holding a dish with one hand and scrubbing with the other reminds me of the necessity of stability and action. The initial addition of water reminds me of the necessity of preparation. The addition of soap reminds me of the necessity of an agent.

teaching

Absolute Value Definitions

I teach three interchangeable definitions of the absolute value function, encouraging students to choose a favorite and be able to swap between them freely. In each definition, the absolute value function is a [real function][(\(\mathbb{R}\to\mathbb{R},\) meaning that for every

project

Starting Self-Taught Courses

Here's the story of this spring semester, and how I made some courses for myself. This catches the reader up to my four-week checkup on progress. Background and Design After finishing my undergrad studies three years ago, I took a break from schoolwork to

rules

Netrunner Rules

I condensed the rules to the card game Netrunner down from its 36 pages, mostly to lower the barrier to entry for new players. Ideally, this text and the starter Shaper and Jinteki decks, with the neutral cards shuffled in, should be all it

math

What are independent probabilities?

The way they are discussed for SAT and GRE exams usually doesn't give students a good intuition. Examples Most probabilities are not independent, which means they have some sort of correlation. (Examples...)(correlated-examples) (start correlated-examples) This US presidential election year, we have Trump as

art

Charcoalings

A series of charcoal artworks I made inspired by pointillist drawings with poetry. As always, I'm fine with anyone sharing my art with credit. Context I tend to have trouble drawing things, in the sense that I am horribly unmotivated to do so. In

cogsci

A Heuristic Model for Emotion

This model comes from a [computational approach to interpreting cognitive science.][(Imagining the brain as a kind of computer, and using that to make predictions.)] , working memory as RAM, and the kinds of intelligence.--> To try to explain emotion, the reasoning goes like

instruction

PulseAudio Loopback

My brother and I have started playing a point-and-click adventure (The Dig) together over Google Hangouts. Here's how we got the audio to broadcast from a Linux machine, with extra explanation for the general solution. The Problem Eric has the game on his Linux

physics

Why do we study impulse?

One of the most unaddressed questions in high school physics is regarding impulse, so much so that most people don't even think to ask it. Here's an answer. Definition Before getting into the "Why?", we must have the "What?". Every

math

Sums of Sequences on the SAT

Monday night, my friend Jesse mentioned an SAT question he felt was actually insightful. It led us to explore a property we did not expect to find. The Initial Question The integer \(8\) may be written as the sum of \(n\) consecutive integers, for

math

Math Process

A number of posts I make illustrate the process of mathematics rather than the results, while still trying to appeal to those primarily interested in the results. This post serves to explain how those are written, and how to read them. Hidden Text The

My Ghost Configuration

I started with a minimalist setup, using the default Casper theme with a few necessary additions. If you like any of them, here's the resources I used. Initially, I made all my alterations in the Ghost header through code injection. Eventually, that got too

teaching

Turning Students Into Scientists

When intuition fails us as scientists, we fall back on experimentation.<!TODO: Post about why experimentation is a "fall back".> This post is about how to build individual skills for students to experiment in a group setting. These skills are

math

Implicit Differentiation

When introducing this concept, most courses overlook the best examples: the basic ones. Implicit differentiation is what allows you to find the derivatives for so many functions and even prove some general properties of derivatives that it's ridiculous to teach the concept without emphasizing